Articles from the Web

Apple on iPhone complaints: Youre holding it wrong – CNN.com.

There is no love lost between myself and the Steve Jobs Megalomaniacal empire at the moment.  But this is even more stupid than usual for that loose-mouthed, consumer-be-damned moron.

Does Fiscal Austerity Reassure Markets? – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

My favorite line from this article is the last one:

“But hey, what are you going to believe: what everyone knows, or your own lying eyes?”

Krugman spends all this time basically analyzing whether it’s a good time to move away from deficit spending and more towards some kind of balanced approach to spending.  I have always thought this was one thing that was ignored by all of the critics when the stimulus package and budget were first being rolled out by the Obama administration.

Specifically, that this deficit spending and all of the activities by the Treasury and the Fed had to happen now, but also had to be temporary.  That the monetary base of the Fed would decrease as it wound down and that the Treasury had no desire to be the owner of AIG or GM forever.  But we had to do this for a while, at the least.

After all of that, Krugman then says that those who push for “fiscal austerity” now have “blind eyes.”  Way to go, Paul.

Android gains web marketshare at expense of iOS « Boy Genius Report.

Eric Schmidt celebrates by running over an ATT cell tower…

BP Increased Oil-Capture Rate to 10,500 Barrels a Day Update3 – BusinessWeek.

About 1/2 way into this article, the COO of Exploration and Production at BP says that they hope to capture “90-plus percent of this flow.”

I realize that by now they must know to be a bit safer in their estimates, but in this case they are still saying that their “hope” (not goal or anything more concrete) is to let “only” 5-10% of the oil to keep leaking straight into the Gulf.

Awesome.

I will admit that this is one of those disasters that is so terrible that sometimes I can’t watch.

[link removed because 1) it was a while ago and 2) don't want to piss off the original poster....]

A short time after the iPad came out, someone at another university (a CIO, I think) posted that “OMG, the Internet is the OS!”  The gist is that he had a revelation that with such a device, it wasn’t about the operating system anymore.  It was about applications that ran on the internet, like Google Docs.  One didn’t need an OS anymore to run local apps.

I had two problems with this.  First, the iPad does run an OS, and Apple is in the business of operating systems.  Yes, any tablet or slate will have some kind of OS on it (even the JooJoo Pad, which is about as basic and internet-oriented as it gets, runs a small linux kernel).  But a lot of applications on the iPad that are so heavily touted – the media player, the book reader, the music player – run on the installed operating system.  These are not cloud-based applications that are accessed via the internet.

Second, I found the revelatory nature of the post rather surprising.  It’s not like internet-based applications are new, nor are other cloud-based service such as storage (enterprise level like Amazon’s S3 or Rackspace or personal solutions such as Dropbox), applications (aforementioned Google docs, as well as a few others).  Software as a Service (SaaS) has been around for a while, too, where one can run traditionally local solutions (like MS Exchange, powering an Outlook-based e-mail and calendar system) in a hosted environment – essentially outsourcing but to the internet.  There is even a Microsoft Office solution for sharing documents via cloud storage, kind of like Google Docs but with a monster of a local application (the Office suite) doing the heavy lifting.

So why would it be so stunning that applications are migrating towards online?

The article linked at the bottom of this post is a more balanced version of what I’ve read on sites like boygenius report, which was much more anti-Apple.  I will look for the little tidbit that Adobe’s CTO wrote later, too, which is quite interesting.

The two quoted sections below frame the entire discussion, I think.  Both companies are basically trying to work within closed systems on a single, dominant platform.  The iPhone and iPad block out Flash, which is an established, dominant media option.  Adobe needs to have Flash work with iPhones and iPads.

The resulting issue, then, is whether “people,” whether Adobe or independent developers, start working on more open platforms.

Narayen said Apple’s criticism reflects an attempt to protect its way of doing business. “This has nothing to do with the technology,” he said. “It’s not a technology decision, it’s a business model: a closed, proprietary business model, with complete control, as opposed to having open innovation drive what happens across devices.”

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris disagreed. “Someone has it backwards,” she said in an e-mailed statement. It’s HTML5 and other standards supported by the iPhone and iPad “that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary.”

via Adobe Upgrades Software to Help Defend Against Apple (Update1) – BusinessWeek.

Conan O’Brien to Host Talk Show on Time Warner’s TBS (Update1) – BusinessWeek.

I am still upset with NBC for the way they handled the entire Conan situation, and will not watch any episode of Leno ever.  So while I am sad to see Conan go to TBS (they don’t yet have a established record for late-night shows…), I’m glad to see him get a show.  And that it’ll go head to head with Leno (with a head start, actually).

Apple Tastes Own Medicine, Gets Sued For Multi-Touch | Android Phone Fans.

Dear Apple:

Suck it.

Sincerely,

Someone that truly likes your products and design emphasis but thinks you’re way too arrogant.

Novell bets on Google Wave to replace its struggling GroupWise platform « Boy Genius Report.

This is one of the most…amazing things I’ve read in a while.  I would normally say “exciting” because it is also that.  But it’s so exciting that it’s amazing.

I won’t lie – I’m not a big fan of Groupwise, and I say that while working at a university that uses it.  I know that Novell’s suite can be very powerful when implemented in the right environment, but I’m not sure that a university is the right one.  Just too many variables at play for something that needs to be fairly controlled yet is not pervasive (such as Outlook via Exchange – of which I’m not a huge fan, either).

But of all the things I thought Novell would do, to base their next e-mail generation on something like Google Wave is BOLD BOLD BOLD.  Wow.

Amazon’s stronghold on e-book pricing crumbles, will renegotiate with Macmillan and HarperCollins « Boy Genius Report.

There has been so much talk about how the iPad and iBooks store has been destroying Amazon.  Specifically, its ability to negotiate rock-bottom (and below-cost) prices for ebooks because they had such a dominant position in the field with the Kindle.  The link above, from BoyGeniusReport, was one of the first really substantive ones I read.  Another one has come out about the third major publisher, Hanchette – also associated with the iBooks store to come out with the iPad – putting the strong-arm on Amazon.

The main link on this post is rather significant, in that it includes a quote from Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp and in a rather level-headed statement, states that

We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They don’t pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge. We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books

This statement is quite telling.  First, Amazon has been selling Kindle books at below cost.  Presumably, this is some kind of strange reverse complement, “razor-blade” scenario.  The Kindle at a relatively high price, and then the books somehow below cost to help drive the justification of buying a Kingle (you need titles, after all, just like one needs to launch a video game console with lots of games right off the bat).  I’m not sure how Amazon is able to handle that much of a loss per book but let’s look a bit deeper.  It might also be Amazon trying to be a middle-person in a two-sided market, where it heavily subsidizes the cost to the buyer in order to produce enough content to make the whole thing worthwhile.  The “charge” to the publisher is the reduced value.  It’s not quite a perfect fit for what I’m studying right now in class but it’s close enough.

First, all Murdoch wants is to charge end-users the actual cost that Amazon is paying.  Okay, that’s actually not so bad.  Other than deviating from the established norm, Amazon is at least now operating at cost.  And considering how many Kindles are out there, they still have a high user base with books that will likely be no more expensive than those available on the iPad.

Second, the comment about value is intriguing.  Even if the prices are exactly the same on the iPad as the Kindle, then “value” to the end user is about the same.  The only difference will be psychological effect of sunk cost – having already bought the Kindle – or other factors.

One rather significant one is that I can go a month without charging my Kindle.  When’s the last time you’ve done that with anything that involves a backlight, LED or LCD screen?  Even if you turn WiFi, bluetooth, etc off you’re looking at a significant decrease in battery life.  And, let’s not forget that while you’re going to get a HUGE surge in iPad purchases at first and possibly an even bigger dent in Kindle sales, I really wonder whether it will, even over just a few months, level off on both sides.

One thing that will also be interesting is whether users will be “imprisoned” by the iPad once they get it.  Not that I am not committed now to Kindle books since I got one, but once you get an iPad, you are unlikely to go out and buy a Kindle if you think it is a better fit for your reading needs.  Unless you are a voracious reader, and the battery life for the iPad just doesn’t fit your needs.